Medical ecology: tending the microbiome

Today, the Obama administration announces the new National Microbiome Initiative, intended to create scientific tools, discoveries and training techniques related to the human microbiome, the 100 trillion microbes that live in the human body. Tending the human microbiome may help in the treatment of infections, as well as disorders that would seem unrelated to microbes, including obesity and diabetes.

The microbiome represents the only organ that can be replaced without surgery,” said Jo Handelsman, a microbiologist at the White House. “Just by eating differently, taking drugs, exercising and other things, you can have fairly immediate effects on your microbiome and your health, if we only knew how.”

Microbiome research also has important public health implications. New research, for instance, suggests that much of the world’s childhood malnutrition arises not from a lack of food, but from problems with children’s intestinal microbiomes caused by poor sanitation.